[Python-Dev] bdist_linux

[David Cournapeau]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:42 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>
>> Maybe I don't understand what is meant by metadata, but I don't
>> understand why we can't provide the same metadata as autotools
>
> Likewise, *this* I do not understand. In what way does autotools
> *provide* metadata? I can understand that it *uses* certain metadata,
> but it doesn't *provide* them...

It does not provide them to external tools, true. Let me rephrase
this: why cannot distutils use and provide metadata corresponding to
the different categories as available in autotools ? It provides both
customization from the command line and a relatively straightforward
way to set which files go where.

Last time this point was discussed on distutils-sig, the main worry
came from people who do not care about tagging things appropriately. I
don't think it is a big problem, because people already do it in
setup.py, or distutils can do it semi automatically (it already has
different categories for .py, .pyc, data files, libraries). Also,
since packagers have to do it anyway, I think they would prefer
something which enable them to send those changes upstream instead of
every OS packager having to do it.

>> python setup.py distutils --datadir=bla --htmldir=foo ....
>
> What's the meaning of the distutils command?

Sorry, this should read python setup.py install ...

cheers,

David